The Bank Robber Game Review

There are some games that just don’t click with me. Flash games are more likely to fall into this category with me, however I can usually overlook annoyances with respect to them being free and often developed by amateurs or people learning their trade. The Bank Robber, developed by Youda Games, has a premium version that is baffling – so the gloves are off.

A Rocky Start

When you first start, you’re presented with a blueprint of the bank you’re breaking into. It details the different rooms and security systems, allowing you to hover over different doors and electrical boxes to see which tools you’ll need to bypass them. You then get to choose a crew (why is it called “The Bank Robber” when you’re always going in with a gang?) and a set of tools – the vital ones are handily asterisked for you – before starting the level. If you’ve forgotten what the level requires, you can bring up the blueprint at any time. So my first major issue here – the blueprint would be a good idea if they committed to it. Instead, you can more or less skip the blueprint entirely because the game tells you what tools you need to complete the level, even if the result is less than optimal.

Next issue – you’ll see right from the main menu where the room has been made for a premium version. Starting right with being able to continue your progress. Yep, in a flash game - where you’ve been able to continue where you left off for almost a decade – Youda Games decided that making that feature only available to people who buy it a good idea.

Generally, you don’t convert people from free-to-players into actual customers by being jerks to them and removing a feature so basic that it hardly counts as one. It doesn’t get much better when you see what tools and characters are behind the paywall, either. They don’t do anything different, they just do what the free ones do slightly better. For instance, the free explosive has a small blast but can break through everything the premium one can, which only has a bigger explosion radius. In some scenarios, that actually makes the free one better. The premium crew members are similarly unimpressive. The only one that seems to be worthwhile is the guy that has a much higher hacking ability than almost anyone else.

What Youda Games really needed to do with The Bank Robber was make it so that the items you got for buying the game did something different – or better yet, do away with this idea completely. Surely it would have been better to have the paid for version include more levels. Instead, one of the key features is described thusly:

“Full version allows you to get on top of the high score.” While other “features” include being able to “use your own strategy”, have access to twenty specialists and access to military-grade tools. That sounds like a pretty terrible sales pitch to me.

Every Cloud Carries a Ton of Rain

The free version isn’t a complete loss. The Bank Robber is a tactical game that requires planning and forethought. You need to use the right crew member with the right tools in order to efficiently make it through the level – and to make sure that you don’t waste a use of your limited tools by having someone who can’t unlock doors attempting to unlock a door (this didn’t happen to me, honest) – however for every little ray of light, there’s a thick, dark cloud of bad design.

Let’s look at the movement. This is a game where you get the best scores by completing the level as quickly as possible. In order for that not to be a frustrating experience, character movement needs to be slick and responsive. It shouldn’t, say, restrict you to moving a character one room per click on a level where there are at least around twenty rooms.

Neither should it make you sit and wait for eight to ten seconds for a character to unlock a door or swipe a keycard, yet that’s exactly what happens. Then again, they have to annoy people into buying their game somehow, right?

If you do make a mistake, surely you can restart the level again, right? Well, freeloading player, you can’t. There’s no restart mission option in the menu, only an exit option. Guess what that does? Takes you back to the main menu and that taunting sight of the unavailable “load game” button.

Guards are blind. Not to worry, though, because so are your characters. They can’t see one another until they’re stood in the same room. That’s as daft as it sounds. If your character is two metres away from a guard but separated by an open door, nothing happens. As soon as one of them steps foot over the threshold, suddenly the guns are out. If, however, they’re in the same room but ten metres away from each other, suddenly their eyes function! The guards don’t actually raise the alarm, either, they do nothing but shoot at you.

Wrapping Up

The Bank Robber is a game that’s been crippled by the greed of Youda Games in constantly surprising and baffling ways. Team of Robbers and Team of Robbers 2 do this same idea much better and without trying to cajole you into paying for it.

The Bank Robber then is a complete bust – like breaking into a high security bank and finding the vault only contains Barbie dolls.